A friend asked about Synthol this weekend. It turns out to be kind of like breast enhancement for guys. It is a way to artificially increase the apparent size of muscles by injecting oil into the muscles.

This video is entitled “Synthol abuse” and contains a (somewhat disturbing) set of pictures that are widely circulating on the web. These are claimed to be photos of people who are using Synthol:

The one characteristic you will notice across all of the photos is the tendency of certain muscles to look big and/or defined even when they are not tensed. This would appear to be the mark of Synthol.

According to this page, Synthol contains “85 % medium-chain triglycerides, 7.5 % lidocaine and 7.5 % benzyl alcohol”. A triglyceride is a fat (see How fats work for details). The generic name for mixtures like synthol is “Site enhancement oil”.

What are the dangers? According to this page, where bodybuilder Guy Grundy talks candidly about his career and experiences, he states:

The main reason you shouldn’t use [Synthol] is that is cheating and looks stupid. I hit a nerve in my triceps and lost feeling and control of my arm for an hour and it was so numb and ached so bad that I couldn’t sleep for three days.

After that my nails all went black and my fingers tips were so sensitive that if I even slightly bumped them it would hurt for hours. That lasted about 4 weeks.

Other sites discuss the risk of injecting Synthol into a vein, which could cause brain damage, heart poroblems and/or death.

The alternative? Implants. They can be inserted into many muscle groups.

See also: Steroids: good or bad?

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Have you been in search of “something for nothing” – the “get rich quick” scheme that causes money to arrive unbidden? This DIY project may be for you.

The idea is to create a vending machine that rewards crows when they find something and bring it to the machine. In this video, Joshua Klein offers a description of crow intelligence and the vending machine:

He also explains a four-step process that teaches crows to bring coins to the vending machine.

Even more interesting – he suggests other things crows could be trained to do in return for peanuts.

If you want to build one of these vending machines yourself as a DIY project, plans are available:

CrowBox (Unleashed)

See also: Are crows the smartest birds?

Let’s imagine that you have a military vehicle (a tank, a Humvee, a truck, whatever) and you want to protect it against rocket propelled grenade (RPG) attacks. One of the best tools available to date, at least for tanks, is reactive armor. You cover the tank in explosives that detonate and destroy an incoming RPG. This video has a nice explanation of the origins of reactive armor and a demonstration of its effectiveness:

There is also electromagnetic reactive armor, as seen here.

Reactive armor is not perfect. For example, if you hit the same spot twice, reactive armor can be penetrated. Some vehicles – especially vehicles with windows – don’t accomodate reactive armor.

Now there is a new technology coming online called Iron Curtain:

New Bomb-Resistant Trucks Will Blast RPGs Before They Hit

The U.S. military’s toughest trucks are getting a new layer of protection — against rocket-propelled grenades. The Army recently awarded an $8 million contract to equip MRAP (mine resistant ambush protected) armored trucks with Iron Curtain. It’s a protection system which blasts incoming rockets before they can hit the vehicle. If the system works, it could go all long way towards neutralizing one of the deadliest threats American troops face overseas.

Here is an explanation of Iron Curtain:

Iron Curtain is detecting the RPG as it flies toward the vehicle and then blowing it out of the air with something like a bullet that travels from the roof of the vehicle downward.

More info:
- Understanding shaped charges
- Krakatoa shaped charge penetrator
- How Rocket-Propelled Grenades Work

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Millions upon millions of Americans drink beer. Next to coffee, beer is America’s second most popular drug delivery system. In beer’s case, the drug is alcohol. Beer is America’s most popular alcoholic beverage.

How much beer is consumed in America? According to this page: “200 million barrels (6.2 billion gallons) of beer are produced in the USA on an annual basis.”

If you assume that there are 300 million men, women and children in America, that’s 20.6 gallons per person. Not counting imports.

However, not everyone in America drinks. According to this page:

Researchers say the percentage of Americans who say they drink has changed little over time, averaging about 63% since Gallup began surveying Americans about drinking habits in 1939.

And 26% of the population is under the age of 18. So there are only 140 million people in America who could be drinking beer. That means the average drinker is consuming 44.3 gallons of beer per year.

That’s about one 16 ounce can of beer per person per day.

This page points out that beer has been a part of America from the very beginning:

The Mayflower, which was headed south, had to make an unplanned stop near wintry Plymouth because, as William Bradford noted in his journal, “We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our Beere.”

Beer is made from water, malted barley, yeast and hops, as explained in this video:

What is malted barley? It is barley kernels that have been moistened and allowed to start germinating (to the point where the seed’s first shoot has not quite broken out of the kernel). That increases the sugar content in the kernel, and the yeast will be eating that sugar and turning it into alcohol. This video explains the process of making malted barley:

What is hops? It is the dried flower of the hops plant, as shown in this video:

According to this page there are two main types of beer: ales and lagers:

The two different categories of beer differ in the type of yeast used to brew them and the temperature at which they are brewed. Beer that is classified as lager uses special yeast that ferments best at cooler temperatures. Beer classified as ale uses another type of yeast that ferments best at warmer temperatures. Both lagers and ales contain hops, malted barley, yeast and water.

Lagers subdivide into pale lager, pilsner, light lager and dark lager. Ales subdivide into brown ale, porter and stout. See the article for descriptions of these seven different types.

More info:
- How beer works
- What would happen if you took alcohol intravenously?

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In Star Wars, the Death Star is able to destroy an entire planet:

But what if you really wanted to destroy planet earth like that? (where “destroy” is defined as “by any means necessary, to change the Earth into something other than a planet or a dwarf planet.”) Is it technologically possible? This article is fascinating because there are lots of ideas in here that may have never, ever crossed your mind:

How to destroy the Earth

If you have a favorite technique, put it in the comments.

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Networked surveillance minicopters can’t be kept down – “The helicopter in this video may weigh only 30 grams, but it carries a compass and motion sensors, can change course and warn fellow craft of obstacles it bumps into, and could even carry a small camera. It can also resist what might be called a King Kong attack – if swatted out of the air the tiny craft soon recovers and takes off again…”

Making the first computer virus – “If you’ve ever had to spend a lot of money on antivirus software, you’d be forgiven for wanting to take Dr Fred Cohen aside for, to put it politely, a few choice words…”

Murdoch’s wink – “Of course, there has always been a way to break out of the prison: If a critical mass of newspapers were to opt out of Google’s search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Newspapers are struggling, but they remain, by far, the world’s dominant producers of hard news. That gives them, as a group, a great deal of leverage over companies like Google who depend on a steady stream of good, fresh online content. Google needs newspapers at least as much as newspapers need Google – a fact that’s been largely hidden up to now…”

How the Large Hadron Collider Works:

Paper-thin Batteries Made from Algae – “Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like “Happy Birthday.” That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper…”

Blind man fitted with ‘bionic’ eye sees for first time in 30 years – “A blind man who thought he would never be able to read again has had his vision partially restored after being fitted with a ‘bionic’ eye. Peter Lane, 51, is one of the first people in the world to have electronic receivers implanted into his eye which send signals mounted in a pair of glasses to the brain….”

Causes of death

I should say it is the most complicated photograph I have ever made… – “Between August 30th 1998 and August 19th 1999 I have photographed the Sun 36 times on a single frame of 60-mm film…”

The advantage of superconducting cables

Weight loss drug targets body not brain – “Medical researchers in Sydney say they have developed a weight loss drug that could change the way the body uses fat. Scientists from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research say the new drug can control weight gain in mice by stopping the body from receiving certain signals from the brain…”

Which chart should I use?

From solar energy to hydrogen: there’s no step two – “Researchers have figured out how to directly couple a cheap and simple photovoltaic system to an equally cheap and simple catalyst that can split water, releasing hydrogen that can be used as fuel…”

Spin success for silicon – “Replacing electron charge with electron spin paves the way for a new mode of computing…”

8-bit device quenches iPhone envy – “The demo video embedded after the break details the device playing video, rendering 3D objects, and displaying pictures and ebooks with touch scrolling. All of this is running at 60 fps for a smooth picture. The whole thing is no larger than the 320×240 LCD that he salvaged from a broken MP3 player. An Atmel AVR ATmega644 microcontroller ties together the display, a resistive touch screen, and a microSD card for storage. The chip also controls the backlight, a Lithium Polymer battery, and uses USB for PC connectivity, charging, and even a mouse or keyboard interface. He etched the PCB himself for surface mount components and managed to do it with just four jumpers needed on the underside…” Demo:

Solar Power Costs 50% Lower than Last Year – “New research by leading alternative energy research firm New Energy Finance finds that solar power will cost less by about 50% at the end of 2009 compared to the end of 2008…”

50 Style Thoughts – “With any rule, there is at least one exception, except for #1, #3 and #8 above…”

The Billion-Year Technology Gap: Could One Exist – “Are we the lone sentient life in the universe? So far, we have no evidence to the contrary, and yet the odds that not one single other planet has evolved intelligent life would appear, from a statistical standpoint, to be quite small. There are an estimated 250 billion (2.5 x 10¹¹ ) stars in the Milky Way alone, and over 70 sextillion (7 x 10²² ) in the visible universe, and many of them are surrounded by multiple planets…”

Tracking a trail of trash in the Pacific Northwest – “O’Connor and Shannon Cheng are volunteers in a study tracking their trash — and giving them the opportunity to reflect on what they use and discard. The tracking devices are about the size of small cell phones and allow for near-real-time tracking of thousands of pieces of garbage…”

Smartphones Could Form Chemical Detection Networks -”A NASA scientist has unveiled a postage-stamp-sized sensor that can plug into an iPhone and convert Apple’s beloved product into a mobile chemical detector…”

The ’00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell – “Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era…”

Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades – “With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children…”

Are We Going to Let John Die? – “John’s story is not so unusual. A Harvard study, to be published next month in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that almost 45,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of not having insurance. John may become one of them…”

Why the hammerhead shark got its hammer – “It’s one of evolution’s most eccentric creations: a head shaped like a hammer. Now, a study suggests that the hammerhead shark may have evolved its oddly shaped snout to boost the animal’s vision and hunting prowess…” See also: Hammerhead shark mystery solved

Oceans Absorbing Carbon Dioxide More Slowly, Scientist Finds – “The world’s oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide (CO2), a Yale geophysicist has found after pooling data taken over the past 50 years. With the oceans currently absorbing over 40 percent of the CO2 emitted by human activity, this could quicken the pace of climate change, according to the study…”

Kiss my cytomegalovirus! – “Mouth to mouth sexual kissing is seen in more than 90% of human cultures. Various theories have been put forward to account for this but none offer a full explanation within an evolutionary framework…”

Pics of the flu virus and some its components – “We talk so much about the flu virus we thought we’d show you some nice pics that CDC has just put up…”

High-fat diet reduces anxiety and depression – “According to an Australian study performed on young rats, the eating of ‘comfort foods’,–that is, high-fat foods–can likely reverse the damaging effects of early trauma, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, in humans…”

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